Archive: entertainment

There are plenty of spoilers in this, but Jurassic World is part of a franchise that just grossed over $1 Billion worldwide, so if you haven’t seen the movie, what do you think happens in the end, the humans survive or the dinosaurs kill everyone?

In Jurassic World, geneticists engineer a super dinosaur, the Indominus Rex, which breaks out of its cage and goes on a killing spree. Not only is the beast nearly indestructible, but it’s also smarter than your average dinosaur. And by average dinosaur I mean, of course, the ABC sitcom Dinosaurs. Indominus Rex sets traps for her victims, digs out her tracking device, hides from people and outsmarts enemies. Indominus Rex even talks to the other dinosaurs, and not in a casual chit-chat, “How are the kids,” kind of way, but about doing some additional damage.

The most frustrating part of Jurassic World is they have this super smart dinosaur, one that’s completely unstoppable. She’s the greatest enemy the world has ever seen, and the Indominus Rex goes on to commit the exact same mistake made by Adolph Hitler on the Eastern Front of World War Two.

In 1941, Nazi Germany controls almost the entire European continent. France, Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands have all fallen and have puppet governments controlled by the Nazis. Spain and Italy are allies. Great Britain is holding on by a thread and the U.S. hasn’t entered the war yet. In Jurassic World, the Indominus Rex kills everything in sight, outsmarts her captors and is virtually indestructible. They’re both at the height of their power.

Hitler has hardly any threat to his empire in 1941. England is struggling to stay alive and can’t muster a credible counter-attack. The United States is wary of entering the war in Europe. The only country that can pose any sort of opposition is the Soviet Union. But Hitler already put a plan in place to keep them at bay. Hitler avoids a two-front war by signing the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (officially the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, for you Nazi-Soviet Paleontologists out there).

This is where the Indominus Rex stands after making a truce with the raptors at the midpoint of Jurassic World. The dinosaur has zero enemies, total control of the island and there’s no way for the humans to mount a credible counter-attack without blowing up everyone on the island at a tremendous loss of life.

Hitler and the Indominus Rex proceed to make the exact same mistake. It’s not so much that Hitler breaks the German-Soviet non-aggression treaty, but that the Nazis do so with brutal violence killing everything in their path. And then just a few decades later the bad dinosaur makes the exact same mistake as Hitler. When are these dinosaurs going to learn?

When the Nazis invade the area that’s now Ukraine in 1941, Hitler actually gets greeted with fanfare in parts of the country. Some of the inhabitants see Hitler as a potential savior from Joseph Stalin. When Indominus Rex breaks out of her cage and wreaks havoc on Jurassic World, I’m sure there are a couple dinosaurs who are happy. There must be a few who think they’ll be freed from the life of captivity created by humans. Humans create these animals in theme parks just to hold them in tiny cages. The other dinosaurs are like, “Yeah she’s pretty evil, but she can’t be any worse than the humans, right?”

This is where Hitler and Indominus Rex make the same colossal mistake. Hitler’s great error on the Eastern Front has nothing to do with dividing his forces, or ignoring the advice of his generals, or putting too much focus on Stalingrad or Leningrad. No, Hitler’s biggest mistake is that he violently suppresses and murders people who could be used as allies.

If Hitler decides to embrace and help the people on the Eastern Front who see him as a liberator from Stalin, rather than murder them all, Hitler wins World War Two. He would double his ranks, turn everyone in Eastern Europe against the Soviet Union and negotiate with the United States and Great Britain to keep all his new territory and win the Second World War.

That’s all Indominus Rex needs to do to win Jurassic World. She just has to negotiate with the velociraptors and stegosauruses and pterodactyls by saying, “Y’know, if you team up with me, we can run this joint and never have to deal with evil humans again. Those humans cooked us up in labs just to keep us in cages all our lives. Then they Instagram pictures of us for their Facebook feeds. C’mon, whattya say, you and me, let’s work together.”

That’s it. If the Indominus Rex says that to a single velociraptor, they win the movie. The dinosaurs just need to team up to take on the greater enemy – humans – and the movie is over. But the dinosaur doesn’t do that. Instead, Indominus Rex follows Hitler’s example to the same disastrous result because history always repeats itself.

Both Hitler and the Indominus Rex introduce unparalleled brutality in their respective regions. This makes people, and other dinosaurs, think Stalin isn’t that bad in comparison and team up to take down Hitler/Indominus Rex. They combat evil with even more evil and they’re only defeated with an unprecedented level of destruction. It all could’ve been avoided with a little bit of kindness, but instead the havoc brings their own respective downfalls.

If Indominus Rex wanted to learn from Hitler, rather than make the same mistake, the dinosaur would’ve changed strategies at her high point. The lesson is that if you ever get to the point in life where you control most of the world or island and you’re that close to winning everything, make allies with your terrified enemies when you hold all the cards. Otherwise you’ll just be another in a long line of sequels.

Watching the screeners for the 2012 Oscars and keeping up with the GOP debates makes me feel an identical apathy for this year’s crop of movies and Republicans. Whether they lulled in the race until one hot week or they entered the race with tremendous buzz and landed with a thud, movies and Republicans share a similar dullness in 2011-2012.

Of the hundred-plus movies that came out last year, there are a handful that have any shot at being named the winner: The Artist, The Descendants, Hugo, The Help (because Hollywood likes this sort of schmaltz, see: Crash) and Tree of Life. If you’re considering nominations then you can also loop in Moneyball, Bridesmaids, Melancholia, Midnight in Paris and War Horse if the Academy decides to open themselves up for bribes. Out of all the Republicans who explored the idea of running for president, we are now down to Romney, Paul, Gingrich and Santorum.

Both groups are the same in that no one really loves any of them, but someone has to come in first. Therefore, one movie and one Republican will have to win not because they were most-liked, but simply because they were hated the least. Obama’s opponent and the winner of this year’s best picture will share the title of not being great, but that they had fewer things wrong with them than the competition.

Let’s start with the current odds-on favorites: Mitt Romney and The Artist. Neither rode a tidal wave of support to get to the front of the pack. No one has ever left a Mitt Romney speech feeling inspired. You watch Mitt Romney speak and you’re left thinking, He said everything he’s supposed to say. The Artist is the favorite for best picture because you leave the theater thinking, That’s the kind of movie that wins best picture. The Artist is not The King’s Speech, it’s not The Hurt Locker. No one is going around raving about how they were bowled over and had the wind knocked out of them and were cheering at the screen by a black-and-white silent film from a French character actor. Read more

Call me paranoid, but I am pretty certain that my cadre of help that I employ around the house are starting to work together and not just to clean my bathtub. I am growing more and more suspicious that they are writing a book detailing their awful experiences incurred by working for me. I don’t know if they were inspired by The Help or if I am a little sensitive since seeing the book and movie’s success, but I think my maids around the house are writing something eerily similar.

My suspicions start with where they would probably begin their narrative: the unabashed abuse with which I treat them. I know you are probably saying that it’s OK because they’re maids, and that is exactly what I thought too. That was all before I read The Help. Then I was like, “Damn, those maids can write some abuse stories.” And let me tell you, my stable of maids have plenty of tales they could recant in detail.

On a wild guess, I’m going to say the first thing they’ll probably talk about would have to be the canings. Slapping a fresh piece of sharp bamboo across their backs if they miss a spot seems like it might merit its own chapter, if not the “hook” that we’d read in the introduction. I thought it would make them feel at home in Singapore, Acapulco or Indian reservation from where they are from. In hindsight, I now see the power of this sold through Amazon under some catchy theme like, “Hot Survival Stories.”

I would say their next chapter might be the wrenching pain that might have come with the separation from their children I caused. It is kind of a funny story about how I had an inside joke with my maids. “If you ask for a raise, I’ll report your families to immigration.” While they never asked for that raise to minimum wage, I thought it would be hilarious to tell INS where to find my maids’ children anyway. The agents busted into homes and schools to send their little rascals to far away lands. I now see how this could have struck a chord with my help. Read more

Have you ever gone on a first date with a total psycho? How about someone who showed you the satchel of cocaine she keeps under her pillow? Or takes you to Bible study to convert you? Or tells you her date rape story in horrific detail?

My first book, Crazy Girls, is available for sale on the Amazon Kindle Singles. It debuted at number one on the Kindle Singles Bestseller List and 11th for all Kindle sales in its first weekend. Costs less than a dollar and takes an hour to read. Crazy Girls is being reviewed as “Required reading for anyone who has ever had a terrible date…” and “An amazing read from first line to last.”

Any support, kind reviews, tweeting and Facebook posts and tremendously needed and appreciated. These things entirely depend on word-of-mouth, so any promotion is very generous. Check out the book here.

Facing an array of failure on the cusp of my college graduation and impending one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand dollars of student loan debt at the age of twenty-six, my life options have never been more clear. Through a detailed analysis of employment potential, career prospects and quality-of-life projections, the only thing I have going for myself at the moment is hoping that my girlfriend of six months is actually one of those secret millionaires.

Most people might say something stupid like, “The love of your awesome girlfriend is worth more than money,” which is completely true if I wasn’t such a greedy bastard. She is all that I’ve got right now. And I mean that in the most heartfelt way, provided that she is pretending to be a hard-working actor to test my devotion and worthiness of her millions. Read more

Typical American news junkie, latching onto the news of the day, the crisis of the week, the humanitarian effort of the month. One world-changing event after another makes us immediately forget the previous crisis that is still ongoing. This is why we must not allow the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear emergency make us forget about Charlie Sheen.

He is still saying crazy shit and winning with tiger blood every day. Yet we have become so focused on donating humanitarian aid to the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders that we’re dropping our obligations to blogging about Charlie Sheen’s Twitter feed. How much nuclear fallout is it going to take for us to completely forget that a TV star is living with porn stars?

The striking fact is that there is absolutely nothing else going on in the world except for the recovery efforts in Japan and Charlie Sheen being crazy. Yet the amount of attention that we now give to Sheen is far less than its market share. Quick, without googling it: how many tickets have been sold for Charlie Sheen’s tour?

Exactly. If we really cared about more than one issue in the world, then you would have that answer off the top of your head. What are you doing instead? Buying iodine tablets? Purchasing gas masks? Stockpiling canned food and water? You should be stockpiling winning just as much.

I am not saying that you should ignore Japan. The Japanese deserve our help, donations and prayers in this time of need. This doesn’t mean that we can just write-off news stories that held prominence just a week earlier. To act like Charlie Sheen doesn’t deserve equal attention is like saying you never cared about him in the first place.

Chaim Levine. Greedy CBS bastards. My favorite twins. Divorce agreements. Winning. Tiger blood. The Warlock? Does any of this ring a bell? Well, guess what? It’s still an issue in the world, one which we are completely ignoring for a little bit of nuclear radiation fallout.

I have got another nuclear meltdown to tell you about. It’s a little failed power plant on the island of the twins that I like to call Charlie Sheen. You used to care about his batshit crazy antics not very long ago, but all of a sudden you have seemed to put priorities on your news stories. It is time to be consistent about your donations, efforts and donations. Let’s start caring about what matters. It isn’t just Japan. It is the man who will single handedly save Japan. It is Charlie Sheen.

Buy Crazy Girls

F**k My Student Loans

Rejected Poetry in Motion

About

Max Lance is a writer, producer and stand-up comedian who lives in Los Angeles. His first book, Crazy Girls, was an Amazon Kindle Single Bestseller for over three months. His web series, High School Summary, has been viewed over a half-million times. His work has been featured in The New York Times, ABC's 20/20 and The Hollywood Reporter. Max has worked for Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox and the Fox Soccer documentary, Being: Liverpool. He is a graduate of USC's School of Cinematic Arts and currently works for The Montecito Picture Company.